Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-12-Speech-4-101"
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"en.20040212.5.4-101"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by congratulating Commissioner Monti, because I believe he is looking after the rights of consumers and of the citizens of Europe, and they are entitled to obtain a decent quality of service and, more importantly, to obtain it at a reasonable price. One of the fundamental defining characteristics of services of general interest is that they are subject to a transparent public tendering procedure. I believe there is still a great deal of confusion here between liberalisation and privatisation. I believe that liberalisation offers a fair framework for competition. In Sweden, for example, we have seen that many towns and cities, often administered by one and the same political party, compete with each other in a bid to provide the best possible services and that a town or municipal administration offering the best deal to the public, to the consumer, is awarded the franchise to provide its services in other towns and cities too. In public tendering procedures, it is possible to specify quite precisely what is wanted. If, for example, a railway service is being put out to tender, a public authority can say that there will be three people at six in the morning, twelve at ten o’clock in the morning and three again at midnight. Good and appropriate tender specifications can then be drawn up for the service from A to B. I am also in favour of public resources being used here, because we are all in favour of the social component of government activity. We want to ensure that services of general interest are accessible to people who have no driving licence or who have financial problems, mobility problems or other disadvantages.
I have to say, though, that liberalisation and fair competition are one track, while privatisation is a second track. I would ask that we try to avoid confusing the two and focus here on the systematic pursuit of the strategy of free competition. In this context I should like to congratulate Commissioner Monti once again for organising his proposal along these very lines. It goes without saying that city councils and public administrations which provide services of general interest will have to compete with our small and medium-sized enterprises. This is why public bodies put services out to tender. At the present time, two out of every three employees works for a small or medium-sized enterprise. There are 18 million businesses here that can bid for a franchise to provide public services for the benefit of consumers. The small and medium-sized businesses pay 80% of total tax revenue; in other words, they ultimately provide the money that enables us to afford these social services in the general public interest. For this reason I believe that the term ‘social economy’, which was once in common use, is inappropriate, as is our German term
literally ‘subsistence provision’, which is commonly used to translate ‘services of general interest’. What we want is the best service for our citizens. That can only be provided in the framework of fair competition."@en1
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